Neighbour Nuisance and Anti-Social Behaviour

Your Responsibilities
Extreme Cases
Serious Anti-social behaviour
Serious Nuisance/Tenancy breaches
Minor/Lifestyle Complaints
Dealing with Nuisance
Noise Nuisance

Your Responsibilities

As a tenant, you are responsible for the behaviour of everyone who lives in or visits the property.

You, and anyone you are responsible for, must not cause a nuisance, or annoy or disturb any other person in the property, on surrounding land, in shared areas, in the locality or in or around Council offices.

We will deal with anti-social behaviour in and around the properties we manage and when either the perpetrator or victim is a Council Tenant or Leaseholder. Contact us using the details on the right of this page for advice.

Extreme Cases - Respond within 1 working day

• Abuse
• Arson
• Criminal behaviour involving violence or threats of violence
• Drugs/substance misuse/drug dealing (allegations of) 
• Hate related incidents
• Physical violence such as assault
• Attacks on Oxford City Council staff
• Serious harassment, intimidation and threatening behaviour
• Removal of racist or offensive graffiti following a report
• Other forms of anti social behaviour requiring an immediate response

Serious Anti-social behaviour - Respond within 5 working days  

• Allegations of aggressive or abusive behaviour
• Prostitution, sexual acts and kerb crawling
• Drug/solvent and alcohol abuse,
• Regular disturbances, such as noise, verbal abuse, written intimidation and harassment
• Other forms of serious anti social behaviour, which in our opinion, needs priority but does not warrant an urgent or immediate response

Serious Nuisance/Tenancy Breaches - Respond within 10 working days 

• Access disputes
• Car repairs
• Litter, rubbish, refuse disposal and fly tipping
• Minor noise nuisance
• Misuse of the Communal areas
• Nuisance from vehicles such as untaxed vehicles
• Pet and animal nuisance
• Running a Business without permission
• Untidy gardens
• Vandalism and damage to property

Minor/Lifestyle Complaints

• Disputes between children
• Pet nuisance
• Use of communal gardens
• Lifestyle disputes where breaches of Tenancy cannot be proved
• Disputes about cleaning communal areas where a Service Charge does not exist
• Parking disputes where no restrictions are in place
• Gardening
• Anonymous complaints

Dealing with Nuisance

What You Can Do

Try talking to them politely and calmly. Explain how the nuisance is affecting you. People often do not realise they are causing a nuisance and are willing to moderate their behaviour.

Keep a record of things when they happen.

Please remember we are unlikely to get involved when a dispute involves two neighbours unless there is a clear breach of the Tenancy Agreement.

Mediation (where an independent mediator can help you and your neighbour come to an agreement, not necessarily face to face), is often the best way forward in such cases.

You can consider taking private action such as an Injunction to stop a nuisance, if you are considering this you should get legal advice first.

What We Can Do

If you are affected by any of the above or feel harassed or threatened by others, we can help.

In the first instance contact your Estate Manager, he/she will visit you in your home or arrange an appointment with you to come to discuss the problems with us.

It may be necessary to involve our specialist Crime and Nuisance Action Team (CANAcT) who will, with your Estate Manager, investigate all complaints, help you to gather evidence in the form of diaries etc.

They will then decide on the best course of action to solve the problems you are experiencing, this could be a referral to mediation, or even legal action against the tenancy of the perpetrator.

Noise Nuisance

For minor disputes, contact us using the details on the right of this page and an Estate Manager will try to resolve the problem.

To report major noise nuisance problems to our Environmental Health team, visit our Noise Pollution page for details.

Page last reviewed 24 Feb 2009